Faust Harrison in New York

 On Wednesday night I did a reading at Faust Harrison Pianos on  West 58th Street in New York. Erica vanderLinde Feidner, a fine  pianist who for years was Steinway’s top salesperson, was the  primary force behind setting up this reading. She is friends with  Michael and Marina Harrison, who very generously kept their  store open past business hours for the event. It’s a lovely store,  at once intimate and grand, with pianos everywhere. The pianos at Faust Harrison are scattered all over the showroom, but not in a way that feels in any way crowded or intimidating. 

The chairs were set up on one side of the room, with a chair for the reader — i.e. me — directly in front of one of these gorgeous instruments. 

 The audience was small but intensely attentive. There  was something very magical about the reading, too,  because my Bloomsbury editor, Annik LaFarge, was  there. It was a treat to read aloud from the book —  our book — while being aware of her presence. The  composer Raphael Mostel was also there,  which  made the evening special indeed.

 After I rambled a bit, then read, I invited people to  ask questions. It was singularly gratifying to know I  could ask Annik and  Raphael to join in with answers.  When a question was asked about why I chose not to  mention the now-popular notion that Gould had  Asperger’s Syndrome, I was able to turn to Annik and  ask her for her thoughts on why we chose to leave that out (the short answer: a posthumous diagnosis like that seems, at the very least, unfair to Gould). Similarly, when describing the scene in which, near the end of his life Gould defects to Yamaha, I could ask Raphael to fill in a few details, as he was the one who was there when it happened. Also, the pianist Carol Montparker was in the audience, and she livened up the discussion with her description of receiving one of Gould’s trademark late-night phone calls.

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